Noah: Faith Filled Work, Part 2 (Hebrews 11:7)

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Noah: A Faith-Filled Work, Part 3 (Hebrews 11:7)

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Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we turn now to your word and we ask that you would speak to us through your word as we hear the author's intended meaning in this passage.

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That is when we know that we have heard what you have to say to us in this passage. And so we pray that all of the distractions of our week and in our minds and our hearts may be put away for this time, that we may focus upon your word and that we may understand it with clarity and see it with conviction.

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We pray that you would teach us and show us how not to trust any of our feelings, our own sentiments, our human wisdom, but to trust and rely upon you and what you have said in your word and in your word alone.

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We ask this in Christ's name, amen. The list of heroes of the faith that we have here in Hebrews chapter 11 gives us insight into faith as we see it displayed in many different ways over the course of many different eras and the lives of many different people in many different circumstances.

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It's almost as if the author holds up the idea of biblical faith, the teaching on biblical faith and just like a precious gem just turns it a little bit at a time for us to see all of the various facets of that precious gem, giving us example after example and illustration after illustration of what biblical faith looks like.

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We see faith in small measures and in large measure. We see faith that is evident in the extraordinary events of people's lives as well as in the extraordinary events of people's lives.

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Faith that is worked out in things that happen each and every day and things that only happen once in a lifetime or once in world history, like a flood for instance with Noah.

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We see faith in all of the everyday happenings and in the daily grind and as well as in the supernatural and extraordinary things that people endure in scripture.

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And the faith that pleases God is this kind of faith. It is that constant, settled, restful trust in God and in his word.

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That's biblical faith. A constant, settled, restful trust in God and in his word.

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It is believing what God has said and just resting in it. And the examples here in Hebrews chapter 11 are examples of the lives of faith.

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Not just instances of faith, but lives lived out of faith. Because biblical faith is not a flash in the pan thing.

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It's not something where you observe in somebody's life, oh, there, there, there, there. I think I saw faith right there. And then you don't see it again for weeks, months, years, or decades.

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And then another little flash of it sometime later in their life. Biblical faith doesn't just spark once in a while.

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Biblical faith burns like a fire. And it's burning all the time. And it is evident in people's lives all the time.

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The examples that we have in Hebrews 11 are of men and women who lived lives of faith. And their lives were characterized by that restful, sincere, devout, patient trust in the word of God and in the word of God alone.

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Men like Enoch, who demonstrated his faith by walking with God for 300 years. Noah, who demonstrated his faith by taking 100 years of obedience to build an ark for the salvation of his family.

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Abraham's life is a life of faith. Moses' life was a life of faith. Does this mean that these men never did anything sinful?

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Does it mean that there was never any glitch? There was never anything that they did wrong? No, that doesn't mean that at all. But it does mean that their faith was evident all the way through that.

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And even in their responses to their incidences and issues of disobedience, they responded as men and women of faith.

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And last time we were together, we spent all of our time back in Genesis chapter six looking at the historical context for Noah because though we are going to look at Abraham and Moses later on in Hebrews chapter 11, we're still focusing on Noah.

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And we spent the time in Genesis six to kind of build the historical and genealogical context for Noah and the age in which he lived.

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Now we're back in Hebrews chapter 11, verse seven, focusing again on Noah and what the author of Hebrews has to say about Noah.

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The author of Hebrews doesn't give us a full exposition of everything Noah ever said or did or everything that can be learned from the life of Noah.

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And so I'm not going to do that. There are incidences in Noah's life and things about Noah that I'm not gonna mention. I'm not gonna touch on them.

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I'm not gonna go through them. The incident with Noah getting drunk after the flood and what happened with his sons and the curses and the blessings, we're not gonna cover that.

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Why am I not gonna cover that? Because I'm afraid to cover that? No, I'm not afraid to cover that. The author of Hebrews doesn't cover that.

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So we're focusing on the things that the author of Hebrews highlights in the lives of these characters of faith. We're gonna observe some details about Noah's faith.

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First, the nature of his faith and then the results of his faith in verse seven. So let's read together Hebrews 11, verse seven.

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By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

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We see there the nature of Noah's faith. He was warned by God about things not yet seen and he prepared an ark in reverence.

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We see there the nature of his faith, that he had faith in God's word. His faith was a faith in what God had said. Not a blind belief on things that are irrational or illogical.

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And second, it was an obedient faith. And then we see there the results of his faith. Three things, the salvation of his household, the condemnation of the world, and he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

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The nature of his faith and the results of his faith. And today we're just looking at the nature of his faith.

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Beginning at verse seven, or beginning at the beginning of verse seven. By faith, Noah was warned by God about things not yet seen.

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Noah's faith was a faith in God's word. And this is essential that we understand this about the nature of biblical faith and what true faith is.

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It is a faith in God's word. It is a faith in what God has said. It's a faith in what God has promised.

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It is a faith in what God has warned about. It is a faith that trusts God even if the only proof or the only evidence we have is just the bare word of God.

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Because that is sufficient. And so biblical faith is a faith that trusts God and it is a faith that rests in his word.

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Noah was warned about things he had not yet seen. Noah did not build an ark just because he thought to himself someday

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God may flood the world. I should probably build an ark. No, Noah had, apart from divine revelation,

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Noah had no reason to think God would flood the world. He had never seen that before. Nobody had ever said anything about that.

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He didn't, he wasn't reading the weather patterns and saying, you know, the meteorologist is saying we have 40 days of rain coming. I should probably build an ark and get ready for this.

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No, it was divine revelation that Noah trusted. The text says that God said to him, now we don't know what the means of that divine revelation is.

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It is possible that Noah saw a theophany which is an appearance of the second person of the

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Trinity, the son before his incarnation. It's possible that Noah saw a theophany. It's possible that Noah got a vision.

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It's possible that Noah heard a voice. It's possible that Noah himself was a prophet and so he received this revelation and he acted upon it.

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Or it's possible that there were other prophets alive in Noah's day who received that revelation and told

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Noah. Any one of those means is possible. We know that there were prophets and prophetic activity prior to the flood because Enoch was a prophet, remember?

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The book of Jude says he was a prophet and talked about God warning, about judgment that would come upon all the ungodly sinners for all their ungodly deeds and all the ungodly things that they did in an ungodly way.

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From the book of Jude. That was a rough paraphrase, but I think I got the number of ungodlies right in that rough paraphrase. So there was prophetic activity before the flood.

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It's possible that there was a prophet whom God had raised up. Maybe even one of Noah's ancestors who had prophesied about the judgment and had warned

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Noah of what was to come. We don't know the means of the prophetic revelation, but one thing we do know is that Noah understood exactly what

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God said, exactly what God was warning about, and exactly what he was supposed to do. Noah did not get, and I'm not gonna get on a hobby horse here,

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Noah did not get a vague impression or a hunch or a liver quiver or some still small voice or some feeling down in his gut that he had to interpret and then double check and then read tea leaves and then consult with some people and then get confirmation and then feel a peace in his heart about it before he went forward with his obedience.

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No, Noah understood exactly what it was that God wanted. And listen, if you have a theology of divine guidance and divine direction that requires you to rest upon all of those means to obey

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God, you have an unbiblical view of divine guidance and divine revelation because that is not taught anywhere in Scripture.

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And there is no example of that anywhere in Scripture. Noah, certainly not. He understood exactly what

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God said, Genesis 6, 7. I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and birds of the sky.

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God said in Genesis 6, 13 and 14, the end of all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence because of them and behold,

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I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood, you shall make the ark with rooms and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.

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Notice the specific divine guidance. Noah was warned of exactly what was going to happen with crystal clarity, the reason that it was coming and what he must do to escape that judgment and save himself and his entire family.

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Noah's faith rested on that divine revelation. God said this to him and Noah said, I believe that and that is biblical faith.

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Biblical faith is not believing something that is contrary to reason or contrary to proof or contrary to science.

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It's not believing something that is mythical that you have no reason whatsoever to believe is actually true, that's not faith.

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That's the world's idea of what faith is. The world says that the more irrational the thing that you believe in, the purer your faith is.

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The more illogical it is of what you believe, then the more strong your faith truly is. They would say if you invent the kookiest, stupidest, weirdest thing that you can possibly come up with in your mind and you really, really, really believe it's true and you put all your effort into really convincing yourself that it's true, man, what an example of faith that is.

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That's not faith at all, that's stupidity. It's not pure faith. In fact, if that is the definition of pure faith, if pure faith is believing something contrary to all evidence, then the people who are really truly the heroes of faith were the

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Sadducees and the Pharisees because they believed Jesus was a liar, a deceiver, and did his miracles by the power of Beelzebub and that was contrary to all evidence because everything from the

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Old Testament told them what they should be expecting. The life of Jesus himself told them what they should believe.

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His miracles were evidence that his claims were true. So between the Old Testament testimony, the testimony of John the

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Baptist, the testimony of Jesus, his character, his life, his own teachings, and the miracles that he did, the fact that they crucified him means that they were believing and acting upon something that was contrary to all available evidence.

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So if faith is believing something that is contrary to all available evidence, believing something that is completely irrational, illogical, and untrue, contrary to reality, then the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees should find their place in Hebrews chapter 11, shouldn't they, for crucifying Jesus? But that's not what biblical faith is.

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Biblical faith is not believing things that are contrary to all evidence. Biblical faith is believing what

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God has said. Now there may not be any evidence in the moment that what God has said is true, but God never says anything that is irrational or illogical or contrary to reality.

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God always speaks what is real and what is rational. It is never irrational to believe what

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God has said, never. Therefore Noah's faith was not in an irrational proposition because believing the

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God of the universe when he says something is in no way irrational. Now you say, what if what

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God says is something that we have not yet seen, is something we've never experienced, is something we've never observed, is something that we cannot necessarily test?

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What if God says something, then is it irrational to believe that? The skeptics would say yes. It is irrational to believe the word of God concerning things past, the creation of the world, and the fall of man, and a talking serpent, and people walking through a red sea on dry land.

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Those are irrational things to believe. And the skeptic would say it is irrational to believe what God has said concerning things that are yet future, judgments to come, and spiritual realities, and the existence of angels, and the ultimate triumph of God over Satan, and the destruction of this world, and the establishment of a kingdom, and new heavens and new earth.

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It is irrational, the skeptic says, to believe any of those things because we have never seen them. So that's illogical, that's silly, that's irrational, that's unscientific.

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Now by and large, these are the same people who suggest that you get your medical advice from Big Bird's Twitter account.

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But they think that we are the irrational ones. They think that we are the illogical ones, but we're not, because it is never irrational to believe what

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God's word has said. The object of Noah's faith was in God's revelation, and he believed it because God is trustworthy, and the one who said it is trustworthy.

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So therefore, it is never irrational to trust one who cannot lie and will not lie, always tells the truth, and always fulfills his word.

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Trust in that being and what he has said is never illogical and never irrational at all. Noah believed what

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God said, not because it made him feel good, not because he was comfortable with it, not because he had other reasons to expect that this would actually come to pass.

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Noah believed this not because it was convenient or heartwarming, I don't think it was any of those things for Noah. I think that the message that he said when

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God said I'm gonna destroy the earth and all living things in it, build a boat, get on it, I'll bring the animals to you, but I'm destroying everything,

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I think that that would have been tremendously disconcerting to Noah. He had to have had hundreds or thousands of close family members and friends and neighbors and acquaintances whom he knew were going to be judged in that flood.

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He believed it not because it was convenient or made him feel good, he believed it because God said it.

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That is biblical faith. Noah had nothing to go on other than the bare word of God alone that this would happen.

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It is never irrational to take God's word at something. Now, Noah was warned about things not yet seen, that's the next phrase.

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By faith, Noah was warned by God, it rests on divine revelation, he was warned about things that are not yet seen. Now, what is it that is referring to the things not, what does that phrase refer to, the things not yet seen?

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It has been believed by creation scientists in the past, I'm going back here a little ways, that what is described here is rainfall before the flood.

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This was a popular view for many years, right after Henry Morris came out with the Genesis flood, it was sort of the cosmology, is that the right word, the model that creation scientists had in the early years of the creationist movement that believed that when

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God created the world, he separated the waters that were below the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse, that's Genesis 1, 7,

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God made the expanse and he separated the waters which were below from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so, and then it was believed that that water that was above the expanse was a water vapor canopy around the entire earth that was a literal physical layer of water that God held in place and that water kept ultraviolet rays out and allowed for the longer lifespans before the flood, and it's a way of explaining that.

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It was a model that was used widely for many years, it has been for the most part, by most creation scientists today, it has been for the most part abandoned.

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Not because there's anything in scripture that says that that did not happen, but simply because it's an unworkable model, so most creation scientists do not believe that anymore.

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They believed, and this, from Genesis 1, 7, as well as there was another passage, Genesis chapter two, verses five and six, listen carefully, it says in Genesis chapter two, now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the

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Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground, but a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

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So it was believed that before, when you had this canopy, there would have been no rainfall, so that when Noah was told that it was gonna rain for 40 days and that the entire world was gonna be flooded, he would have said, what's a rain, what's rain?

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He wouldn't have known that, because Genesis 2 says that God had not sent rain upon the earth. The model has been abandoned because it creates more difficulties than it actually solves, so I don't hold to that, most creation scientists do not hold to that.

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It is my conviction that the mist referred to in Genesis chapter two, verse six, the word translated midst there is a word that means a freshwater or a source of freshwater, it could refer to a stream or to a freshwater spring, and I think that that is what is being described.

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In the Garden of Eden, God had just created it, and the reference to there being no rain on the earth in those days doesn't mean there was never any rain before the flood, it means that with creation being fresh and the cycles of the hydrological cycles just being established, there wouldn't have been time for this rain to develop, whatever you wanna call it, and so God had created a world in which there was underground water, and in those days, a source of freshwater came up out of the ground and that watered the garden.

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All of the plants that God had made in that original creation got their water not from a mist that came up, but from a source of freshwater.

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When I was in Israel a few years ago, we went up to the headwaters of the Jordan River, and you can walk right up there, you're walking along a path, and all of a sudden you come to a point where there's just water bubbling up out of the ground in all these places, and it eventually accumulates and heads down the

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Jordan River. That's where the Jordan River comes from. Jordan River comes from north of the Sea of Galilee, the

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Jordan River comes from this spring that just comes up out of the water. It bubbles up year -round, fresh, cool, clean water year -round from underneath the ground.

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I don't think anybody really knows where it comes from, but the Islamists really wanna seize that area, because if they can grab that source of freshwater, you know what they can do to the nation of Israel?

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They can destroy them. So I think it's the same thing. Before the flood, there was an underground spring, there was springs underneath the earth, and this is testified, in fact, in Genesis 7, verse one, sorry, verse 11, it says up, it refers to the great deep being broken up as part of the flood.

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The fountains of the great deep is what caused, it wasn't just rain like we get around here for 40 days.

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We've had, I don't know, some years, 30 days of straight rain, we've never been close to flooding, right?

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We're not talking about just your average rainfall that caused the flood. We're talking about the great foundations of the earth being broken up, the fountains of the great deep, all of that water came up out of the surface of the earth and the rain coming down from above.

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So it wasn't rainfall that had never been seen. Noah being warned about things not yet seen was not falling rain, what was it?

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What had Noah never seen before? Nobody had ever seen a global cataclysm on the order of what

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God was warning about. Nobody had ever seen an extinction level event brought about by divine judgment.

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Nobody had seen that. Nobody had any reason to think such a thing were possible. Nobody had ever seen the continental plates break up and begin to move, and continental plates begin to go over top of and underneath one another.

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Continental plates begin to collide with such force that it would push mountain ranges up high into the sky.

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Nobody had ever seen that. Nobody had ever seen the great fountains of the deep break open and cause massive cataclysmic tidal waves and volcanic eruptions and destructions.

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Imagine what would happen if all the crusts of the earth's surface broke open and you saw these massive volcanic eruptions from underneath of the sea, what would happen?

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Something like we saw a couple weeks ago, right? Did you see the satellite images from space of that one volcano erupting underneath the surface of the water and all of that steam and ash came up to the surface?

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Imagine that happening in hundreds of places around the globe as the great fountains of the deep break open and all of this water comes up, the steam comes up, and what would that create in the atmosphere?

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It would create a cloud cover and a deluge like the world had never seen before. This is what

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Noah was warned about. He wasn't warned about raindrops. That happened before the flood. Wasn't worried about raindrops.

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He was warned about an extinction level event that would wipe out all living things except whatever got onto that boat.

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That's what he was warned about. Nobody had ever seen that before. And listen, other than the bare word of God, Noah had nothing to go on but what

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God said. There was nothing in nature that would have caused Noah to think that that could happen.

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There was nothing going on on the planet that would have made Noah think that such an event could transpire.

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It was nothing but God's bare word that he had that that was proof enough. Now notice what

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Noah's response was. Noah's response was not to question the legitimacy of what he had been told.

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Noah didn't say, look, Lord, what you're saying is gonna happen is completely unscientific.

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It goes against all of our scientific models. Nobody has ever observed this. The laws of physics do not allow for this.

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The laws of geology do not allow for this. We've never seen a judgment like this in the past. My suspicion,

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Lord, is that all things can continue as they have from the beginning, and since there has been no judgment like that in the past,

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I don't see any reason why we should expect a judgment like that in the future. Noah did not say that. And Noah did not question the propriety or the morality of what

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God had told him. Noah did not suggest that God was unjust to judge all mankind in that way.

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Noah did not suggest that the punishment for this humanity was a little too heavy -handed. I mean, look around,

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Lord, you see what they're doing, and yeah, it's bad, but it could be a lot worse. This doesn't seem like a proportional response to judge people in this way, to drown the whole world just for the little bit of sin that we see going on around us.

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Noah didn't say that, and yet this is the objection of skeptics today, isn't it? Have you heard them raise this objection?

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They will say, what kind of a God would drown an entire world of people, men, women, children, animals?

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I mean, listen, if I caught any one of you drowning a puppy in your bathtub, I would think you were a sociopath and a moral monster.

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I'd probably be right. So what kind of a God, how are we to believe in a loving God who would drown men, women, and children, babies, infants, pregnant mothers?

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And we're not talking about a couple dozen. We're talking about probably hundreds of millions, if not billions of people on the planet at that time before the flood.

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Wouldn't that make God a sociopath and a moral monster? That's how the objection goes.

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Let me answer the objection for you. God is not a moral monster. The men and women living before the flood were moral monsters.

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And God is just, and he is a just judge, and he is righteously indignant against the wicked each and every day, and every act of impenitence and rebellion by a wicked sinner who is outside of Jesus Christ is nothing more than a flaunting of their rebellion against God that provokes his anger, courts his justice, and defies and dares him to do something about it.

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The wicked are the moral monsters. God is just, and he doesn't owe us life, and he doesn't owe us longevity of life.

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He doesn't owe us anything. And as the just ruler of all mankind, and the one who sits enthroned in the heavens, and the one who is created and gives all of life,

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God can give life, and he can take life, and he needs no justification other than the very act that he does in doing it to morally justify him.

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Especially when we consider that God was unbelievably patient for 120 years. Noah built a monument to the judgment that was to come before the eyes of all of these people, probably somewhere in the middle of that original continent, probably, this is speculation, probably up on a hillside so that everybody could see it.

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And for 120 years, word got around through everybody what Noah was doing and what Noah was preaching. And for 120 years,

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God patiently endured a world in which there was nothing but wickedness and corruption. In fact, everywhere the earth was filled with violence, immoralities, and oppression, and bloodshed, all mankind had corrupted itself on the face of the earth, and all the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.

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That, by the way, is a quotation from Genesis 6, not yesterday's headline. So when you factor in the moral culpability of all of those people and what they did before the flood, the moral monster is not a just judge who judges sin.

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In fact, our perspective should be that if God does not judge sin in that way, that he would be a moral monster.

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That should be our perspective. And mankind has it completely perverted.

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Noah's time was much like today, and listen, friends, there is a judgment that is coming. And God has warned us of those judgments.

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Matthew Henry said God usually warns sinners before he strikes, and where his warnings are slighted, the blow will fall the heavier.

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God doesn't just judge in acts like this without giving any warning. But his warnings were slighted, and the blow fell the heavier.

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There is a judgment that has come. In fact, there are a number of them. It won't be by water, but by fire. There will be judgments upon nations who continue to rebel against God's rule and against his

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Christ and his anointed. There will be judgments during the great tribulation period. There will be a judgment at the end of that great tribulation period, the

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Battle of Armageddon. There will be a judgment for the establishment of the millennial kingdom of Jesus Christ.

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That judgment will be upon all of the wicked. At the end of that millennial kingdom, there will be another judgment upon the wicked, and then the entire world will be judged by fire as everything will melt with a fervent heat before he recreates a new heavens and a new earth.

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All of those judgments have been laid out for us in the order in which they are to occur, and we have been warned of them. And God commands all men everywhere now to repent because,

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Acts 17 30 says, he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, having appointed that judge, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and he has furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead. So God has announced the judgment is to come.

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He has told us the order in which these judgments are to come. He has told us who it is that is going to be the judge, and then he said, as a matter of proof,

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I'm going to allow that judge to die, and then I will raise him from the dead and bring him up and seat him in my right hand. That judge that is going to judge all mankind is also the only one to whom we can turn to escape that judgment for clemency.

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He is God's modern -day ark, and if you are in him, you are safe, and if you are outside of him, you will perish, just like the world of Noah's days perished.

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One further thing we should note about this faith of Noah is that it was a faith not just in the promises of God's blessing but also in a warning of God's judgments.

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There are plenty of people alive today, even people who call themselves Christians, who are all fine and warmed by the promises of God's blessings.

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So when God says something and he says, I'm gonna bless you, and I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to bless you and keep you, and all that warms our hearts, we believe that, but all of the warnings about God's judgment, about the impenitence of the wicked and what is going to happen and things that are yet to come, they don't wanna believe those.

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They wanna believe some of God's word and not all of God's word. On this point, Spurgeon said this, he who does not believe that God will punish sin will not believe that God will pardon it through the atoning blood.

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He who does not believe that God will cast unbelievers into hell will not be sure that he will take believers to heaven.

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If we doubt God's word about one thing, we shall have small confidence in it upon another. Sincere faith in God must treat all

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God's word alike, for the faith which accepts one word of God and rejects another is evidently not faith in God, but a faith in your own judgment, a faith in your own tastes.

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Only that is true faith which believes everything that is revealed by the Holy Spirit, whether it is joyous or distressing, close quote.

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That's biblical faith. If God says something that brings me joy, I believe that. If God says something that distresses me,

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I believe that too. Biblical faith embraces both of those. Biblical faith is willing to hold on to both of those.

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If you believe that God is trustworthy, you will believe everything he says. That's a fact. If you doubt something that he has said or reject something that he has said, that's not biblical faith.

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You really don't believe then that he is trustworthy. If you reject some of his revelation and believe only the things that please your senses, that comport with your predilections, then really it is only your own desires, it is only your own thoughts, it is only your own judgments that you want to see affirmed by the revelation of Scripture.

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And that is nothing less than a heart of unbelief that is self -worship idolatry.

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That's what that is. Biblical faith rests upon both the promises of God and the threatenings and believes them both.

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And Noah is the consummate example of such a faith. Since faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen,

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Noah believed something that he was warned of that he had never seen. Nobody had ever seen it. In fact, he had no reason from anything that he saw to believe that this would happen.

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But he believed the bare word of God because God spoke it. Second, Noah's faith bore fruit in obedience.

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This is, again, with the nature of his faith. It was a faith in revelation and it was a faith that issued in obedience. Constructing the ark was

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Noah's work of obedience to the Lord. If Noah had not believed that God was gonna flood the world, he never would have built an ark.

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If he had doubted that, he never would have spent his entire life and probably most of what he had and all of that effort for 120 years constructing the ark while the patience of God waited in those days.

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But Noah believed God and because he believed God, he went to work. It produced in him, his faith produced in him an obedience.

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And this is what we're talking about earlier in the service when we talk about faith being coupled with this obedience, the faith and the works. Noah's faith was not, yes,

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I will believe that, but I will do nothing about it. Noah's faith was, yes, I believe that, and therefore I will get to work in obedience to what

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God has said because I believe it. The faith was issued in obedience. The faith and the obedience go together.

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James 2, 17, even so faith if it has no works is dead being by itself. The faith that is not accompanied with good works is a dead faith.

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James 2, verse 26, for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

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And James is arguing that the faith that does not produce good works, the faith that does not issue in obedience, does not result in obedience to that is a dead faith.

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It's the faith that demons have. Demons believe that much. Demons believe that much and they tremble. At least the demons have this on you, they tremble at that.

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But if you're not even willing to tremble and not even willing to obey, then do you really have faith? James would say no. You may say that you believe that, but that belief cannot save you, that belief cannot justify you.

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As Calvin has said, the faith that justifies, sorry, it is faith alone that justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.

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It's faith alone that justifies, declares us righteous, makes us righteous in the sight of God, but the faith that does that, the faith that accomplishes that imputed justification is a faith that is never alone.

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Faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone. If Noah had not believed what God had revealed, he would not have taken

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God at his word. He believed God's word. And look at the attitude of his obedience in verse seven. It was in reverence he prepared an ark.

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And reverence is an interesting word. It's translated in reverence in the NASB. It's variously translated in other translations, but it has kind of a similar idea.

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King James Version says he was moved with fear. The new King James moved with godly fear. The NIV says it was in holy fear, and the

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ESV says in reverent fear. The word describes a pious care or concern, and I'm using the term pious in its older sense.

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Today we use pious as a pejorative, right? Are you just a pious jerk? Which means you're sort of an arrogant, pompous, self -righteous, overconfident jerk.

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The old idea of pious or piety had to do with a genuine spiritual devotion, a sober spiritual mindedness.

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So this piousness is a devout, God -fearing, carefulness and precision in Noah's obedience. When it says he did this, he was moved in reverence.

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In the King James moved with fear, it's a godly fear, a reverential fear, that describes somebody who is holy and reverent, and God -focused in their obedience.

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It is an obedience that keeps God in front of the heart and of the mind, and does the act of obedience to God because of the faith with a view to the one who is being obeyed.

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It is a holy reverence or a devout fear, a God -focused devotion. Noah was careful and meticulous in his obedience.

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So much so that Genesis 6, verse 22 says, thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him, so he did.

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He did it. He left no stone unturned. He did exactly what it was that God commanded, wanted to leave nothing out of it.

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Whatever God had said, Noah did. The instructions to build the ark, probably given to him by divine revelation in some sense.

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He was told what the dimensions were to be. He was told what the shape it was to be. He was told how many decks it were to have. Probably a lot of details not recorded in the scripture that God would have given to Noah by divine revelation, and Noah was meticulous and devout and precise and careful in his acts of obedience.

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He didn't just say, you know, I kind of get the general idea behind this. I'll just build a boat. However it works out, whatever the dimensions happen to be.

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No, every last thing that the Lord revealed, Noah obeyed. And it was a long obedience too, 120 years.

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120 years Noah built. For 120 years he was a preacher of righteousness, 2 Peter 2 verse five says.

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He was a righteous man, Genesis says. He found favor in God's sight, grace in God's sight.

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Genesis 7, one says Noah was righteous. So he was a righteous man and he was a preacher of righteousness, which means he proclaimed a righteous message, probably describing righteousness and warning of a righteous judgment that was to come.

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So he was a man who preached righteousness and then Hebrews 11, seven says, he was an heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.

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Righteousness characterized Noah's life. And that was his message, a message of righteousness and the judgment that was to come.

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He built a monument to the coming judgment in the sight of all of those people, right in front of their eyes.

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And do you think, I ask you this, do you think that the unbelieving world of Noah's day was sympathetic to his message?

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At all? Filled with violence and bloodshed, hating the God of truth and righteousness?

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And you think that as Noah spent over a century building that monument to their coming judgment right in their eyesight, and he preached to them about the judgment that was to come, warning them of that judgment, calling upon men to repent.

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Do you think that they sat down every night around their dinner table and thought, you know that Noah, such a kindhearted guy.

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We really do love him. Everything about him we love. We're just gonna have to ignore this one little quirky detail about his life.

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Do you think that was their response? He was a man that was probably confronted with more hostility in his lifetime for what he was doing.

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More mockery, reproaches, jeering, hatred, than probably you and I will ever face in our lifetime.

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And how many people came on board the boat with Noah? Seven others. Now listen, even if you and I assume that all of Noah's family were saved, all three of his sons, that they weren't just doing this because dad was doing this, and thought, you know, hey, once the day comes, we load all the animals on, it doesn't rain, we can get off of this, we can mill this thing up and sell it for firewood.

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Assuming that all of his sons were believers, and all of their wives were believers, and that Noah's wife was a believer.

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Even if you assume that, that's eight people out of millions, millions.

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Only eight of them got on board the ark. Not a single convert from all of Noah's preaching got on board the ark with him on that day.

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Not a single convert. That's not to say he had no converts. He may have had converts who died prior to the flood, but it is to say that there is nobody who was converted by the preaching of Noah who stepped on board the ark with him and his family.

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Genesis 7, one says, the Lord said to Noah, enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone

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I have seen to be righteous before me in this time. Let's just assume for a moment that that declaration is not just of Noah, but his family, that the

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Lord is speaking there collectively in the, I don't know if there's such a thing, the royal you, like all of you who are getting on the ark, all eight of you, let's assume that that is the case.

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He would have been a lonely man in his righteousness, would he not? It is easy for us to have faith and to trust the

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Lord when our faith is buttressed by friends and family around us who are close to us, whom we can spend time with and we can enjoy sweet fellowship with.

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That strengthens our faith. When you show up here on a Sunday morning, you get to look around, you see a couple hundred other people who have a like -precious faith.

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That strengthens you, does it not? Do you not leave here on a Sunday morning, I do this all the time, leave here on a

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Sunday morning and think, I'm not crazy. Like there's other people who believe this, there's other people who cherish these things, there's other people for whom these things are precious as well.

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The world has gone mad, but there is a remnant out there that is not insane and nuts. Our faith is strengthened by the presence of others.

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As we all worship the same God and face the same trials, the same struggles, enjoy the same grace and look forward to the same blessed hope, anticipate the same rewards, worship the same

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God, fellowship together in the same spirit. But how would your faith fare if you were one of eight among hundreds of millions, if not billions of people?

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How would your faith fare? Noah's faith fared well for 120 years at least and he was unmoved by it, unmoved.

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That's something that's difficult for us to even understand, the struggles that he would have faced, what he would have had to have endured.

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How would your faith fare if you worked and preached and served and obeyed for 120 years and at the end of that, nobody joined you in your act of obedience?

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That would be tragic, that would be discouraging, that would be disheartening but it would also be exactly what the

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Lord told Noah was going to happen, right? Noah believed the word of God.

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Many were called, eight were chosen and eight people entered on the ark. Sometimes we labor long and we see little fruit, sometimes we strive long, we pray long, we don't get the answers that we want, we don't get the answers that we desire in a timely fashion.

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The burden is not lifted, the thorn is not removed, the difficulty is not alleviated, the situation doesn't change.

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We serve sometimes fruitlessly, we serve expending effort and sometimes see little results from that. That's exactly why

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Noah is such a great example of that kind of biblical faith and Noah, he did not have the revelation that you and I had, he did not have the

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Pentateuch, he did not have the minor prophets, the major prophets, the Psalms, he didn't have any of that, he didn't have the historical literature, he didn't have the gospels, he didn't have the epistles, he didn't have the book of Revelation, didn't know the end of the story.

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Noah did not have the benefit of revelation that you and I have, we have the divine son incarnated in humanity and we have the eyewitness written down, inspired, infallible testimony of everything that he said and did that the

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Lord has preserved for us and the implications of that given to us, we have all of that divine revelation. Noah did not have any of that and yet he was faithful.

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Friends, God does not call us to be fruitful, God calls us to pursue fruitfulness, but he calls us to be faithful.

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The fruitfulness really is up to him because it is God who produces the fruit, the spirit produces the fruit from our acts of obedience, but God calls us to be faithful.

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I cannot determine the level to which I am fruitful in my ministry or in my Christian walk or in my efforts to serve the

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Lord and you can't determine that either. We can do our best to become instruments in God's hands that we would desire him to use so that we might be fruitful, we might pray for fruitfulness, we might ask the

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Lord to use us in a way that would make us fruitful or maybe even allow us to see the blessings of that fruit in the lives of other people and sometimes

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God gives us glimpses of that, but he has not called us to produce fruit in that sense, that we work and strive and that we are responsible for what happens, he has called us to be faithful.

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I may not be able to be fruitful in this world, but I can be faithful in this world. You and I can be faithful in the midst of hostility, you and I can be faithful in the midst of a wicked world, you and I can be faithful when everything is falling apart around us, you and I can be faithful in the midst of persecution, we can be faithful to serve the

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Lord in our day. Faithfulness is within our grasp. We can do that and we are responsible for that, but we have to trust the

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Lord for the fruitfulness that might come from that. We will not disparage Noah nor could anybody disparage Noah that he had no convert who came onto the ark with him.

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We are here today and we are admiring this man's faith even though there was no fruitfulness that entered onto the ark with him and yet we admire his faith, why?

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Because he was faithful in his day. God did not use that to convert anybody and bring them onto the ark with Noah and his family, but that was not for Noah to be concerned with.

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Noah's concern was faithfulness. You got 120 years, build the ark, I'll bring the animals, be ready on that day and on that day

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I will flood the world. You get on the boat, I'll shut the door and I'll take you through the flood. That was what God called

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Noah to do and Noah did exactly what God had called him to do. And the faithfulness, it was not for Noah to worry about.

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Remember the context of Hebrews chapter 11 again. I just remind you of the end of chapter 10. It's been a while since we were there. The author is writing to people who had endured a great conflict of sufferings, had been made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations and some had become sharers with those who were so treated and they had suffered the seizure of their property.

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Which is why chapter 10 verse 36 says, for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised.

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Noah is the perfect example of that. 120 years he endured and God was faithful and gave him what he promised.

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You have need of endurance so that when you have been faithful to the end you will receive what was promised.

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Noah was faithful, Noah endured and Noah received what God had promised which was the salvation of his house, the damnation and condemnation of the world and he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

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And that's next week. We'll look at the results of Noah's faith. Let's pray. Father, we do ask that you would encourage our hearts together in your truth.

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What an example Noah is of the type of faith that we are called to live in this world and we pray that you would strengthen our heart to be men and women who model that kind of faith, taking you at your bare word, trusting what you have said, not relying upon our own intuition, our own wisdom, our own understanding, but upon your word and your word alone to believe it and to act according to it, knowing that you will also give us grace to endure, that you will strengthen us and allow us to live.

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Allow us to receive what it is that you have promised. We look forward to that blessing and we pray that you would strengthen our hearts and encourage our hearts by faith together as we worship and fellowship.

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Thank you for all that you do in us. Sanctify us according to your truth, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Amen. Amen.